


A Midnight Snack

by youwilllovemylaugh



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Blue/Gansey - Freeform, Comfort Food, Eating to Cope, F/M, Gen, Guilty Pleasures, Ice Cream, Implied Relationships, Sleepy Boys, Weight Gain, anxious boys, gansey's a soft rich boy and he'll never be anything but, guilty eating, hella longing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 09:24:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11354556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youwilllovemylaugh/pseuds/youwilllovemylaugh





	A Midnight Snack

The thing about Richard Campbell Gansey III was that he never really could sleep.  
  
It was well after midnight when he finally rolled out of bed, exhausted from trying to hide under the guise of sleep. The weighted blanket, something Ronan had dreamt for him weeks ago as the Henrietta winter began to peek over them, was not helping him fall into unconsciousness as they’d hoped. It was really just a large, gray blob of--well, Gansey wasn’t sure what, as he hadn’t had the thought to ask what was actually making the blanket so heavy.  
  
The floor in his bedroom was cold beneath his bare feet. There were a million things he could be doing right now--struggling through an essay for Latin class, scouring the sink in the kitchen/laundry/bathroom, reading about the possible favor they were purportedly promised once they woke Glendower, building Blue’s house out of cardboard in the little model of Henrietta that was gradually overtaking his room. He wanted to call Blue, too. He wanted to hear her voice. He wanted to pick Blue’s brain about the layout of her enormous and quirky house on the other side of town. He wanted to drive out to that house and pick her up and feel her sitting next to him in the Pig, her hand on his on the gear shift. He wanted to hear about her day at public school, about her mother’s return from wherever underground she had been.  
  
But he couldn’t do any of those things tonight. He couldn’t call 300 Fox Way without risking the wrath of at least a dozen other sleeping women. He couldn’t build the house because he hadn’t quite figured out its full layout yet, even though he’d finally made it to its second floor, and he couldn’t read because his eyes felt too bleary and tight from lack of sleep, and the idea of scouring the sink after Ronan’s dirty dishes had been sitting in there for something like a month made his stomach churn.  
  
The thing about Gansey was, at this hour of the night, there was only ever one thing he wanted to do.  
  
He threw on an extra-large sweater of his dad’s and padded into the kitchen/laundry/bathroom. He opened the pantry doors. There wasn’t ever a whole lot to choose from in there. Gansey had about as much grocery shopping experience as Ronan had tact in his body, and it wasn’t like any of the three Monmouth residents could actually cook--Noah didn’t even eat at all. So, mostly Gansey stared at a few of Ronan’s ancient-looking ramen noodle cups and packages of peanut butter cookies, before closing the pantry doors altogether.  
  
The dining services at Aglionby were suitable enough for his tastes, which he knew meant they were much better than anything Blue could get at her school, which meant he felt guilty every time he walked into the great hall and felt his mouth water. It was why he was usually found elsewhere for meals, at Nino’s or the taco place that did take away, or the burger place that let you have free dessert if your order was more than $20.  
  
But even though Gansey’s orders were typically more than $20, there never seemed to be any leftovers sitting in his fridge at night. Sometimes, the food didn’t even make it past Monmouth’s front door, just the bags stuffed in the garbage and the lingering sound of a belch being stifled by his fist as a reminder of what he’d just eaten.  
  
His mother would probably have a fit if she knew how he ate when he was in Henrietta.  
  
Gansey pulled open the fridge doors. There were few items in there as well--a couple of yogurts that Blue might have brought over toward the end of summer, a jar of pickles, a bottle of red wine vinegar. He wrinkled his perfect nose as something struck his heart like it were the Liberty Bell. He had proof Blue had been here, even if it was from months ago.  
  
Tossing the expired yogurts into the garbage, he closed the fridge door and opened the freezer. There was, as per his wont, a half-gallon tub of mint chocolate chip ice cream sitting eye-level on the shelf, and he took this out with two hands, as if it were precious.  
  
The floor of Monmouth was cold beneath his pajama pants as he sat himself down in front of the fridge with a tablespoon and the freezing tub of ice cream. He was grateful for the sweater, which at least blocked his stomach from bearing the brunt of it, for now. He tugged off the lid and placed it on the floor next to him. He hadn’t been on this floor in a long time, but he recalled the last time he’d been here well: on the phone, listening to Blue talk about Maura missing, wishing he’d been there to hold her.  
  
The surface of the ice cream hadn’t been touched, a slightly frustrating reminder of how infrequently his insomnia had reared its ugly head in the last several weeks. Managing Gwenllian and beating back panic attacks and spending hours convincing himself that no, there was nothing crawling up the back of his neck right now, had all piled up on him and crushed him into sleep at night in a way that weighted blanket was simply unequipped to replicate. He dug eagerly into the ice cream with his spoon, biting back the hint of regret he could feel inching its way up his throat, the still-ringing bell of longing in his lungs.  
  
He had been chewing mint leaves forever, but the thing that made mint ice cream better was that it actually felt like something in his mouth. He savored the way the cold hunks of chocolate heated slightly before melting on his tongue; he loved the way mint felt even colder than it normally did on the roof of his mouth when it was in ice cream. A part of him wondered what it would feel like to put a spoonful of this in Blue’s mouth, to kiss her right after--but no, no, he banished that thought with a flicker of impatience.  
  
He ate, and ate. The ice cream was cold in his belly and it seemed only to get colder as he sat there. But it felt better. He felt better than he had walking into the kitchen, less like his insides were going to explode and more like he was going to be all right.  
  
It was weird to him that he hadn’t even realized he’d felt that way until now. Halfway through the ice cream tub.  
  
He looked down at it again, in something of a shock. He’d done this before, yes, he’d eaten probably way more than he should have on countless occasions, just as mindlessly as he had tonight. Perhaps he’d even done it in front of other people.  
  
But he didn’t even feel the ice cream weighing on him this time. His stomach felt empty as it had when he’d walked in, if colder. Putting the container down for a second, he prodded himself, placed a hand on the slight roll of pudge that had been growing around his waistband area for months now. It didn’t feel unlike him. It didn’t feel wrong. It just felt new.  
  
Like this persistent emptiness was new.  
  
He picked up the ice cream container again and continued.  
  
This time, he ate more quickly. The ice cream barely seemed to melt on his tongue now, which was fine, as it was beginning to melt from the heat of his hand holding the tub. In another few minutes, he realized with something of a thrill leaping through his stomach, that he might be able to knock back the remainder of the container’s contents if he pursed his lips right and tilted his head back. It would be melted enough to do so quite soon.  
  
Leaning a bit to his left to make sure the door to Ronan’s room was still shut--and feeling, for the first time, the heft in his belly shift as he moved--Gansey leaned back against the fridge and poured the rest of the tub down his throat.  
  
When he swallowed the final drops of melted ice cream, he took a much needed breath and belched into his fist. He felt his cheeks redden at that. He felt heavier, maybe, in a less corporeal sense than he’d hoped for. One of his hands had fallen instinctually onto his belly, and he noticed that he felt softer beneath his sweater than he remembered. He patted himself, once, as if testing his newly discovered belly to see if he liked it.  
  
He couldn’t say that he didn’t.  
  
The lid to the tub was still beside him, and he put it back on the empty container, licking off the rest of the melted ice cream that had gathered on it before he did so. He checked the side of the container--he’d never eaten more than one of the little pints of ice cream he could get at the gas station in one sitting before, and out of a curiosity he thought some might call morbid, he wanted to know just how much his stomach could hold.  
  
The container was only 1.5 quarts. He frowned a little, feeling like that number hadn’t met the expectations he’d had in his head.  
  
But he reconsidered when he stood, slowly. It was as if everything settled further down inside him when he stood, and suddenly he felt the new weight of his belly in his thighs, in his knees. He tossed the container in the garbage, careful not to let his eyes linger on the crumpled sack from the taco place that he could still see peeking out of the bag. Earlier that day, he’d bought ten tacos for dinner with the intention of sharing them with Ronan, but when he got to Monmouth and saw that Ronan’s BMW was nowhere to be found, he ate all ten of them alone in the front seat of the Pig.  
  
He didn’t want to think about how fitting that name might be for him, as well.  
  
He wandered back into his room, one hand still curiously on his own belly, which seemed larger and larger under his palm as the seconds went by. As he flopped back on his bed--a little too hard, he realized, as he felt his belly slosh around as he hit the mattress--he let himself think of Blue again, her head on his chest, her hand over his on his belly. He fell asleep quickly.  
  



End file.
